Persons and organizations often perform backup operations to protect important data. In some cases, these backup operations may create snapshots, which may record and preserve the state of data at a single point in time. The backup operations may also create a catalog that tracks metadata about files and data within the snapshot. The catalog may enable the tracking, searching, browsing, locating, editing, and/or restoration (e.g., granular or selective restoration) of the files and data within the snapshot. For example, in some conventional systems, access to the catalog may be needed to restore files and data within a snapshot.
In these conventional systems, generating a catalog may consume large amounts of time and storage. For example, generating a catalog may involve mounting a snapshot on a client, traversing an entire file hierarchy within the snapshot, and while traversing the file hierarchy, generating the catalog, and then dismounting the snapshot from the client. In this example, the time consumed generating the catalog may be directly proportional to the number of files and/or directories in the snapshot. A typical snapshot may include a large number of files (e.g., millions of files), and generating a catalog for such a snapshot may involve a significant amount of time and resources. What is needed, therefore, is a more efficient and effective way to generate catalogs for snapshots.